IDA backs hotel, factory developers

The Yonkers Industrial Development Agency at its July meeting authorized financial incentives to developers of a shopping-center hotel and a furniture plant in the city.

The agency will provide Instock Cabinets Inc. a sales tax exemption of approximately $84,000 on purchased materials used in the company”™s conversion of the former Stewart EFI plant at 630 Central Park Ave. IDA officials also will negotiate a property tax abatement with the new owner.

The former metal stamping plant was closed in 2008, idling 145 employees as Stewart EFI shifted manufacturing operations to the company”™s newly expanded plant in El Paso, Texas. An affiliate of Instock Cabinets last year paid $7.6 million for the 201,000-square-foot Yonkers property.

The vacant factory will be converted into a showroom and assembly plant for cabinets at an estimated cost of $2 million. The business will bring 40 permanent jobs to the city. Instock Cabinets currently is located in the Bronx.

“Manufacturing is becoming an endangered species in New York state, but we are showing it can work in Yonkers,” said Mayor Mike Spano, who chairs the IDA board. “These are important skilled jobs to have in our community.”

The Yonkers IDA also approved nearly $1 million in sales and mortgage tax exemptions for a New York City developer”™s $26.2 million conversion of an office tower and former hospital at the Cross County Shopping Center into a 155-room, 72,000-square-foot hotel.

Friend Development Group L.L.C. is seeking a national hotel brand for the site. Construction could begin in the fourth quarter of this year and the hotel is expected to open in summer of 2014.

The IDA board authorized approximately $702,000 in sales tax exemptions for the construction phase, an approximate $277,000 mortgage tax exemption and a still-undetermined property tax abatement

The hotel project will create up to 100 construction jobs and 28 permanent jobs, according to the developer.